“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Lao Tzu

What a good time to review where you are going and reflect. Tacking upwind to deal with the changing the weather patterns to get to your destination. Question is, have you a destination or are you just being blown about by the winds of other people’s thoughts?

So how do we make the changes? Well first of all where are you heading? Let us say that we need to increase business, get more people in; how many and from where?

Once you know how many and who they are, can you see them in your head? This all helps to alert the unconscious to look and see the opportunity that you would have previously missed.  I use this system for teaching music as it connects with the unconscious and bypasses the intellect. The imagination helps to process large amounts of information and for the creative process it helps to mitigate the negative effects of the conscious mind. When we hear the music in our head it will come out of your fingers; see the musicians playing in your head and you can alter the dynamics of the parts that you are playing.

Imagination helps us to find a new direction, once we have the outcome in our minds the unconscious will flag up the opportunities. Ok you have to trust this process it is a bit like learning the guitar, if you keep telling yourself you cannot do this and you are not good enough, talented enough or just that it does not work for you, you will fail. So make a plan, work back from the picture and see what happened before and then before that till you reach what you have to do today; then do it.

So instead of looking back we should look forward and set a challenge for the New Year. May I wish you all the very best for your plans.

 

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  Play in a rock band for three days

 

Let us look at the clever indoctrination in history and think again.

I learnt that Nelson won the battle of Trafalgar; the Duke of Wellington beat Napoleon at Waterloo; the Duke of Marlborough won the battle of Blenheim and so on. History is littered with great men (mostly) doing great things. The great men of history were aristocrats, interesting! The truth is they would not have got very far without an army or navy manned by the VERY special ingredient, ORDINARY people.
Ordinary people have been written out of history just in the same way they are being written out of the education plans. Ordinary people have an extraordinary ability overlooked by history and the current education system, they can learn incredible skills WHEN they are motivated and that is my point, where is the motivation in being told consistently that you are not good enough?
We have an education system being pissed around with by a dick from a public school with someone in charge of Ofsted who appears either to have OCD or is a sociopath and everyone has to do what he says. ‘We should be more like the Chinese, Japanese and Indonesians’; apparently they are better than us. I am interested in the deeper meaning of this, of the masses working so hard that many young people in places like Japan under the pressures of expectation commit suicide.
In my opinion we should be like ourselves and to point out how brilliant our ordinary people can be read the Putney debates from the 17^th century when the foot soldiers of the New Model Army discussed how the political system could work. Remember these people were left out of history overshadowed by Oliver Cromwell and King Charles! You realise that these simple people were brilliant thinkers, as are we today. 
The idea that we should be more like the Chinese might be a good idea in some ways however because they rose up and disposed of their leaders, so Mr Gove and Mr Wilshaw beware of what you wish for.
 
Vic
 
Three days of music www.bluescampuk.co.uk for details
 

The seen on the unseen

In weaving there is a warp and a weft thread. The warp thread when you weave appears to disappear but of course it does not, it is not lost, it is the unseen that is draped the seen. It is the lesson for every day that the seen is woven on the unseen.  Stephen Jenkinson
 
This is the mystery of music the fact that contained in the music that we listen to is an unseen or unheard structure that holds the music. I often refer to this as the operating system as many of my pupils can understand this dealing as they do with computers every day both are good metaphors for the deep structure of music.
Behind the notes there are chords and rhythm, that in Jenkinson’s words are the warp but I would say there is something behind that, the intention of the artist and this is the power that gives music and art gravitas.
It is the power that makes Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy work, the repeat riff of five notes does not change but just builds in power as it repeats. The two chord vamp in Le Freak that just continues to drive forward and make you want to dance is another good example. Another good example of this deep structure bestowing a hypnotic power are the icaros of the South American Shaman.
In mainstream teaching this is never covered, the whole of the music teaching is in the reading of the dots on the page this is like looking at the tapestry which is great for the onlooker but if you want to make the tapestry you need to know how.
Answer the awkward questions like, why is it that the most brilliant of musicians often could not read music and many were illiterate? For these it was a case of going straight to the deep structure, the ‘unseen’, getting to the magic and weaving it from there.
Vic
 
 Special rates for Bluescampuk.co.uk

Gove, you twat!

The results for the educational tests make the British education system fall down the world ranking in maths, science and literacy. Gove's immediate response is 'It's not me governor it is the other bloke, my changes have not happened yet'. What!

Step back and look at this from a historical perspective and ask a simple question, how did we get to being in a prominent position in the world in the first place? We are a small island race who over a few hundred years went from being eyed with envy by the Romans then by the Saxons then the Vikings and finally by the Normans.

The Saxons had created a stable prosperous nation with effective laws that was the envy of many countries in Europe. We could hold our own and trade with the rest of Europe we were very capable and when the Normans took control after a number of years of turbulence we were then dealing with one of the most powerful countries in Europe France and doing very well.

With the advent of Henry VIII we stopped following the rest of the world and did our own thing (which we had done before, pre Roman and pre Norman). We told the Pope to get lost; in fact we pronounced him as the anti-Christ and struck out on our own and over the next few hundred years. We fought our way with much cunning to the top and like it or not started to throw our weight around.

I am interested in how we did this and in my short conclusion we did it by alliances, trade and clever thought and this thought was unconventional, outside the box, reinventing the wheel.

We did not do this by following the others but by changing the rules by creative thinking.

I do not find anything creative in the way that education is heading, so let the teachers get on with teaching stop trying to follow the Chinese; let’s be ourselves.  

 

Vic

 Special deals for Bluescampuk   www.bluescampuk.co.uk